


Always That Way

by Insomiak



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insomiak/pseuds/Insomiak
Summary: How can Riku not know? They’d never come out and said it. But somewhere between Riku throwing his life away to save Sora’s and the long looks and the willingness to spend eternity together on that dark beach, he’d just assumed.





	Always That Way

 Sora snaps. “I’m not with Kairi!”

“I know. I’m trying to tell you-”

“No. Shut up. Riku, shut the hell up.” Riku does, though it’s with a glare. “We all love each other, and that’s- of course I love her.” Sora scratches at the back of his head. Things seemed so much easier than this when he was planning how to do it last night.

He’d thought he wouldn’t have to explain it. Riku would just know, like how Sora just knows, and that would be it.

“But I thought things between you and I...” He feels his throat start to constrict, dry and stuck on each word. “I just, if I’m wrong it’s okay - you know, whatever happens I’ve got your back. But aren’t we… Don’t you, too?” He looks up at sea-green eyes finally.

Riku is looking back at him, but his expression seems off. Unreadable. “What?”

Sora starts to panic. He really hadn’t thought this out beyond a ‘So…’ with a big smile and expecting Riku to know exactly what that meant.

He shifts his gaze away, looking out across the clear water. It stretches out forever in each direction. How did they ever expect to cross it on a raft?

“I met a lot of people who fell in love, you know?” Mulan, Megara, Jack, Elizabeth, Belle, Ariel… He’d helped Ariel. Sora likes to think he knows something about the subject. “They helped and supported each other. A lot was against some of them. Wars, politics, species.” Silver eyebrows raise at that. Sora will have to fill him in later. “And I thought-- after awhile I thought that person for me was you.” He takes a step closer to his friend. A step he hopes seems surer than he’s starting to feel about all this. “Sorry. I mean, that person for me _is_ you.”

Riku continues to look confused and quizzical.

Sora tries again. “When I saw you - remember, in the snow? - and when I found out you’d been helping us. I knew. Or I knew for awhile, and then I was sure. Or-”

“Sora.”

He shakes his head in a physical attempt to clear it, groaning. “I think it started- I have no idea when it started.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sora could pull his freaking hair out. How can Riku not know? They’d never come out and said it. But somewhere between Riku throwing his life away to save Sora’s and the long looks and the willingness to spend eternity together on that dark beach, he’d just assumed.

Sora looks up at him again. He’s so tall now — he’d always been taller. It used to be annoying.

“You really don’t know?”

Riku shakes his head. “Sorry. All I got was that we make a good team. And that you were an intergalactic lovers’ counselor.”

Despite himself, Sora laughs.

 

* * *

 

He hadn’t managed to get through to Riku. They’d gone fishing and talked about different worlds they’d been to, a conversation they’ve had more than once, and wondered how everyone was doing.

At least now they have time. At least Sora doesn’t have to be afraid of Riku disappearing. (Which doesn’t mean he isn’t afraid — doesn’t mean he hasn’t woken up after a few dreams of blackness engulfing sea-coloured eyes and an uncaring stare and a hand that never makes it to his own). 

Sora goes to Kairi’s that night.

Selphie is there too, and Olette on her computer. How the three of them managed to figure out how to connect from world-to-world is beyond him, but Kairi can use magic and she’d always been clever.

The redhead brightens and asks How did it go? when Sora walks into her living room, clearly expecting good news.

He flops onto the couch, sinking into it. “He doesn’t like me.”

Kairi, the Seventh Princess of Heart, snorts.

“Who?” Olette asks from the monitor.

“Riku,” Kairi answers.

Sora feels his heart sinking into the couch with him.

“That friend you were looking for?” Olette puts a finger on her chin. “I’m sure he likes you, Sora.”

Selphie grins. “He means _likes_.”

“Oh!” Olette’s eyes widen for a moment. Sora doesn’t really care — he watches the sunset splattered over the off-white walls of Kairi’s apartment. “That’s, I mean, that’s fine Sora. Twilight Town is pretty open about that stuff. Er. But I did think…” She smiles meekly. “I guess I thought you liked Kairi.”

Sora groans and hides his face in his hands. “So does he!” He peeks through his fingers at the redhead. “Kairi, I’m about to lose it. Why does everyone think we’re dating?”

“I know.” She smiles at him and pats his knee. “Selphie could tell you all about it, but I wouldn’t get her started.” The brunette sticks her tongue out. “How about instead you go get a beer from the fridge?”

“We’re too young to drink.”

Kairi laughs. “We’re too young for a lot of stuff. Flying spaceships, fighting wars, defending royalty.”

Sora gets up and heads to the fridge.

—

“So basically,” Olette says, drinking wine on her end of the screen. Hayner and Pence are in the background playing some game. “Sora- you just need to tell him in the most clear and simple way possible.”

“I did!”

Kairi betrays him, utterly. “Doubt it.”

Sora gapes at her. “I told him! I said, ‘Riku, you’re- I think of that person as you!’”

Kairi and Selphie exchange a look of great non-understanding.

“What person?”

“The person who— the one…” Sora feels like sobbing. He is much, much more comfortable beating baddies with a keyblade than this. “The other half. You know.”

The three girls laugh at that. Selphie mentions something about another student in her classes with a similar inability to explain herself, and the conversation drifts.

Sora’s fine with that. He didn’t come here to intrude on their night. He’s happy enough to sit here and enjoy the peace; he’s sure, someday, they’ll have to go back out there.

He spends the night at Kairi’s, in her guest room — more for comfort than anything. They’ve shared a bed before. But right now, Sora wants to curl up and mope all alone.

“You okay?” Her voice drifts into the room.

Sora sticks his head out of the covers. “I should’ve kissed him when that blind-fold came off. Or when we beat Xehanort. Or after he’d passed his mark of mastery.” He feels like scowling, like hating, like being bitter.

Sora’s learned better, after everything. So he just sighs and rubs his face with the heel of a hand.

“I thought it would just happen, Kai.”

She nods. “I know you did.” Kairi walks into the room and sits on the bed, looking at pictures on the wall. “He’s stubborn, Sora. You know that. If he thinks we’re together or that you want us to be, he will fight to get out of our way.”

Sora looks over at the pictures too. All the friends she’d made along her own journey.

“Maybe he really doesn’t, though.”

“And maybe I slept with three of the other six princess.”

“What!”

“Point is,” she grins at him, “you don’t know, do you?”

Sora has never wondered what it’d be like to have a sister. He’s known since he was eight and Kairi fell from the sky.

 

* * *

 

Sora has a dream, lying in Kairi’s guest room. He dreams about heavy arms around him, a safer hold than any defencive magic he knows. He thinks that’s an awfully cheesy comparison, magic to the security of love, but it’s also the most right. Riku holds him close and tucks his head under Sora’s chin and Sora swears it’s brighter and warmer than lighting shooting from his hands.

He wakes up, cold and alone in a dark room. There’s no Riku. For a mad moment he thinks he’s always been gone — that the darkness had kept him. The tail-end of the dream flips into the blackened room and Sora forgets if Riku ever made it back, did he find him, did those clear eyes blink open, did he really take his hand and feel him there. He’s gone, his mind insists, he’s gone.

Sweating, Sora comes down from it. He hears waves crashing outside. He’s on the university’s island, in Kairi’s dorm. Riku is one island over. He’s sleeping, safe, probably tucked neatly in his hospital-corner covers.

Sora pulls his phone out. He opens Riku’s name, and types.

Sora / 3:11am  
You awake?

After a minute:

Riku / 3:12am  
Yes. Everything okay?

Sora isn’t sure. He doesn’t want to live off of dreams. He doesn’t want to wake up missing arms that haven't held him. He wants to _protect_ , even if Riku never needs it.

Sora / 3:12am  
I’m coming over.

Riku / 3:12am  
Now?

Sora / 3:13am  
Yup.

Riku / 3:14am  
Okay. Be careful on the water.

Sora / 3:14am  
I’ll have you know, Riku, I’ve had a dolphin tail before!

He adds a dolphin to the message, just to be cheeky.

Riku / 3:14am  
Our great and esteemed keyblade master: half dolphin, half dork.

Sora / 3:15am  
You’re the keyblade master.

Sora doesn’t want him to forget it. Keyblade masters don’t use dark magic.

Riku / 3:15am  
You’ll get it.

Sora / 3:15am  
You know I don’t care.

Riku / 3:15am  
I know.

Riku / 3:20am  
See you soon.

 

* * *

 

The ocean is cold, but Sora paddles his way to the main island Riku’s place is on. It’s just as dark as the day they’d been thrown from their home. It feels like that same night, for a moment.

There are no heartless, not here, not now. There’s no valley of misunderstandings separating them. Riku isn’t keeping information to himself. Kairi isn’t dead. There are a billion stars and a bright moon lighting his way.

_We’re safe._

Sora pulls the boat up on shore, ties it, and walks to Riku’s. He’s living in a small single-condo on the beach, the salt water staining the wooden siding. It’s a nice place. Sora moved back in with his mom, but more out of love than needing to. He’d missed her, and she’d been pretty mad at him for disappearing and only ever sending letters.

There’s another reason he hasn’t started renting his own place. It’s in front of him now, sat along the beach, big enough for two.

He walks in through the front door, wood creaking. The light in the kitchen is on, dimly, so Sora heads there first.

Riku is doing dishes at four in the morning. Sora chooses not to question it, though he wonders about nightmares and sleepless nights. Riku starts to ask him what’s up when Sora finds he’s unable to keep a lid down on all his feelings and all the words he’s tried to mould around them snap out.

“I’ve loved you my whole life,” he says, his own voice ringing in his ears and filling the sparse kitchen.

Riku doesn’t turn around or even seem to hear him. He just continues drying the plate in his hands, his back to Sora. Really, an ‘I love you’ isn’t rare, not from Sora, but he’d sort of hoped for more of a reaction. For any kind of reaction. Is Riku just ignoring him?

Has he been ignoring him this the whole time?

Sora raises his voice a little - tries to speak loud and clear. “I don’t know if realizing I wanted to _kiss_ you made it romantic—”

There is a satisfying crash of porcelain hitting the floor. Riku’s hands freeze, empty in the air.  
  
Sora takes a step closer.

“—or if it was always that way,” he finishes, his throat cinching up again. Riku still hasn’t turned around. Broken pieces of the plate crunch as he shifts on his feet.

“Riku.” He hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s begging. “C’mon, turn around.”

He does, and leans back against the counter. He won’t look at Sora. His eyes find a corner of the room, downcast.

Sora holds his hands out, speaking with them as much as with his words. “If you- If I have the wrong idea, just say so.”

Riku shakes his head. “No. You don’t.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“Riku—”

Pale hands grip the counter behind him. An intake of air makes Sora clamp his mouth shut.

“You might not have realized until you were older,” Riku starts in a rush, “But I knew I liked you since we were kids.”

Sora feels his heart stop panicking, stop floundering. But it flutters instead, and his knees go a little weak, and he can’t believe the relief that comes with his ears hearing what his heart had always known.

“I figured it wasn’t going to happen. You had Kairi. Even before she came to the islands, I never thought…” Riku’s shoulders sag. “What were the chances?”

“Chances?” Sora’s voice cracks and sounds useless in the distance between them.

“No one would think you’d choose me over Kairi.”

“I didn’t _choose_ anything.”

“Fuck.” Riku’s arms tighten, a reflex of regret that Sora’s learned to read after a few months of having him back. “I know. That’s not what I mean.” He opens and closes his mouth. “The boy falling in love with the girl is the obvious...” Riku searches for a word. Sora watches him think, the same expression he has when he reads. “Outcome. Not choice.

“I knew you liked Kairi, and I accepted that that’s how things were. You two would get together, and I’d… I’d figure something out.”

The idea makes Sora’s gut twist. He understands logically that he could live without Riku. Sora had gone through almost two years of his life without him, if he didn’t count all the ways he’d helped in secret. But it doesn’t matter. Them together isn’t even the point. Everything else aside, the idea of Riku isolated and sad just makes Sora sick.

“For years I thought that’s how things would turn out. So when Kairi found me and told me I was an idiot for asking if you’d finally kissed her, I couldn’t…”

The ticking clock on the wall fills the following silence. Sora watches the lines from Riku’s face to his neck, back up to his nose and cheeks and ears and the hair sticking out behind them. He’d never pictured a future without Riku in it. Not a happy one, anyway. Even when he had liked Kairi, or thought he liked her (that’s what Kairi says it was--just an idea), Riku was always there. There were always going to be mornings on the beach with him, late-night sparring sessions, and they’d go visit other worlds together for sure, with or without the king’s permission. Romantic or not, Sora’s idea of the future had always had Riku in it.

It hadn’t been the same for Riku. He’d thought of a future with Sora somewhere else, and he’d thought about it for over a decade.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Sora says, finishing a thought his best friend can’t voice.

Riku folds his arms over his chest. He shrugs. “Don’t know,” he says, words as weak as the lights are low, “Maybe it just doesn’t feel right.”

That’s it, then. That’s all Sora can take.

He walks the two steps he needs to be in Riku’s space. Riku’s expression shifts from miserable to wide-eyed shock. His cheeks turn pink so fast Sora’s worried he might get dizzy.

He threads a hand through silver hair, across his jaw and holds the side of his face. His pale skin turns pink all the way to his neck, his shoulders are stiff, embarrassed and holding himself together and back all at once. Sora wonders if Riku’s ever kissed anyone. He wonders if some of this, most of this, is just because Riku’s nervous.

Sora is too.

He hasn’t been this close to Riku in a long time. If he presses their chests together, if Riku would just move his arms out of the way, then Sora would be closer than he’s ever been. He leans in anyway. He sets his chest over those arms. He wonders how his heart can pound this hard. It hurts.

“Riku,” he says into whatever space is between their mouths, some insignificant amount, some small thing, “Can I kiss you?”

The pink cheeks flare into red. Sora feels it when Riku breathes in sharply.

“What?” He says, sounding confused, surprised, like he really hadn’t thought it could happen.

“Can I?” Sora searches sea-green eyes as they scatter around through his own. They look unsure and worse: untrusting. “I really want to,” Sora says. “I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

Riku’s face turns even redder. He looks like he might run away, but instead those arms finally move. Riku puts them at his own sides. Sora wishes they were somewhere else, on his back or neck or holding his hand, anything, anything.

But he falls forwards anyway, filling the empty space along a broad chest.

Riku breathes in again.

Sora moves both his arms over his shoulders, his hands just below Riku’s neck on his back. He can’t stop the grin that spreads out across his mouth. Their thighs, hips, and chests are pressed against each other. He feels too warm -- but excited, happy. Moving carefully, slowly, Sora sets his forehead on Riku’s, lost to the action.

He can’t smell anything but the sea-air and Riku.

“So can I?” He asks again, feels their bodies move together as he speaks.

A hand finds Sora’s waist. It’s shaking slightly, but doesn’t move away.

“Yeah.”

The lips waiting for him are warm. Sora thinks that he wants to spend the rest of his life keeping them that way -- and breaks into a laugh through the kiss.

When he pulls back, still laughing, Riku doesn’t look afraid anymore. His face is still red, but now looks the way he usually does when Sora’s being ridiculous.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Sora sighs happily, feeling a little high on the moment. On Riku. High on _Riku_. He laughs at that thought too. “Can I do it again?”

Riku rolls his eyes. This time, he’s the one to lean in first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The second fanfic I ever wrote was a Sora/Riku. It was written in 2006. It’s awful, so I had to write something better. This is 100% self-indulgent, but I hope it's as cathartic to read as it was to write.
> 
> Sort of based off of/inspired by this artwork (the second one): [[starhoodies](http://starhoodies.tumblr.com/post/151950051338/youre-as-beautiful-as-endless-youre-the)]


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